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 Shortly before my daughter, Abra, was born, I stumbled upon an article in the The New York Times that discussed the idea of the modern-day Sabbath. How, it asked, could we slow down our lives and connect with ourselves and each other in a deeper way? Standing on the precipice of becoming a family of three, I found myself longing for sturdy traditions that I could build a family on and immediately my mind gravitated to food, which has always served as a sort of compass in my life. I reflected on the “Sabbaths” of my youth, when my mother would lovingly prepare a special meal at home. Sunday was the only day of the week that she didn’t go to her job as a cake decorator at The Fantastic Cake Box and, desperate for a rest, the activity of the seventh day usually orbited around home and hearth. The dinners were generally seasonal: Pot roast would cozy up alongside a rustic apple crisp, steaming up the kitchen windows on a cold winter’s day. Cool slices of banana cream pie, my dad’s favorite, would be dished up in the warm summer months. These were not fancy meals served on our best, chipped china; rather, they were an everyday centerpiece to our small family being in one place, at one time, one day of the week.
Despite the modest affairs that defined the Sunday dinners of my youth, I had strong visions of how I would carry out this special weekly meal with my own expanding family. Complicated, scratch meals would be served on the delicate china that my mother-in-law gifted me. Bathed in candlelight, we would sit around the stately cherry dining room table that was my grandparents’, toasting to the clink of the crystal goblets that were passed down from my parents. I imagined that this elaborate event would happen every Sunday, without fail.
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I just recently realized that beets and fennel are a great combination, and beets also go well with lots of the other anise-flavored herbs like tarragon and caraway. The lemon-fennel relish is especially nice with Meyer lemons, which taste like a cross between orange and lemon. The recipe makes more relish than you need for the salad, so save some to serve with fish or chicken for another meal.
